


the color of love

by ascendingfromatoms



Series: breath of the volleyball [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood, Coming of Age, Lurelin Village, M/M, Shipwreck, breath of the wild AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25709281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ascendingfromatoms/pseuds/ascendingfromatoms
Summary: The fishermen bring back a young boy who seemingly came from the sea. Curiosity gets the best of Kunimi, and a well-tempered friendship forms between them in snapshots of summertime.
Relationships: Hanamaki Takahiro/Matsukawa Issei, Iwaizumi Hajime & Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio/Kunimi Akira
Series: breath of the volleyball [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863265
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	the color of love

The elders speak in hushed voices late at night, but not unintelligible enough that he cannot decipher them. Kunimi collects vague snippets of words, as they float up onward from the half-shut door of the chieftain’s house all the way to his secluded perch on the bendy tree. He leans his head lazily against the hard bark, falling in an out of consciousness from a long day.

Down below, the fourteen year old Hajime is cross legged on the sandy gravel, fashioning a make-believe telescope from his weathered son-of-a-fisherman’s hands. _He’s some kind of ocean boy,_ a man interjects, proceeding to talk with his hands about how he seemingly came from the sea, right off the coast of Eventide Island.

A woman’s voice perks up with interest, noting that Eventide Island itself felt removed from its surrounding area. Someone else argues that the entire concept is blasphemous—but the statement is not of particular use in their pursuit of knowledge. The council erupts into discussion, the sound resonating throughout the meeting hall, and trickling its way up to the boys’ hideout. 

There’s only one person that can silence the overlapping arguments of the townspeople. Kunimi watches the hand go up, and the timbre of the voices mellow out to a soft level. He hears the louder boom of his father’s voice, which nearly prompts him to clamber down the tree in an effort to make himself scarce. The village listens intensely— _We shall make use of him here in Lurelin Village._

He and Hajime share a confused glance in the brief moments after the declaration. It is evident the elders are speaking of someone, but it’s unclear as to who. Hajime signals him to climb down with a special knock against the tree trunk, and he wriggles down slowly.

“Earlier, my dad was kind of in a hurry when he got back from fishing, and we didn’t go out on the boat like he promised we would after school today,” noted Hajime, as they set foot for their respective houses. Their little spy sessions were often fruitless, but they were an excuse to snoop in on their parents.

Kunimi trudged him along the dirt road, saying, “My dad didn’t even come home after work.”

“It must be something big then,” Hajime concludes after a moment of contemplation. “Something bigger than this whole town.” The two boys actually weren’t too far off from the truth. That day, the fishermen found a boy shipwrecked at sea.

* * *

The kid doesn’t wake up for days.

Kunimi doesn’t learn much about it from his dad and Hajime, too, returns empty-handed when they next meet. It seems as though there is a lot that even the adults cannot comprehend. The village is buzzing with curiosity, chatter filling the air with endless possibilities. At first, only the mothers appear at his bedside to get a closer look. But after the third sunrise, everyone is just too nosy to leave him alone in the infirmary.

For a place where nothing happens, something like this is all too strange and unknown to simply ignore. In time, the big kids are on tip-toes poking their heads through the windows of the medical hut, trying to get a peek, and desperately attempting to make sense of it all before relaying the information down to the little guys.

He had spent the entire afternoon lazing around on a swaying hammock, waiting for his friends to show up at their meeting spot. Up, he stares at the sky, sleepily tracing the negative space between the clouds with his fingers. It’s oddly peaceful, the way that he’s surrounded by shades of blue, all around. He closes his eyes to bask in the sunshine for a moment and naps until familiar voices make their way up the hill.

Kunimi sees him for the first time: wide-eyed gaze, big blue eyes. _He’s just a boy,_ but he seems to be made of seawater and other wonderful things. He’s wearing some gaudy old shirt, yet, it appears as a billowing sail pushing him forward.

“Hey,” he drifts towards the ever-incessant tow. It seems as though the boy has a pull of his own, rivaling the tides of the sea that he has come to know by being in a seaside village. He breathes the very blue into the world.

* * *

_My name is Tobio, what’s yours?_

“Kunimi.”

* * *

Tobio doesn’t talk much about his past. In passing conversation, he briefly mentions that he had a sister, but doesn’t delve into much else. Hajime and the other kids know not to pry, but a little part of him wants to know his history. With the little that he knows about him, Kunimi’s more and more inclined to believe that he’s just a mystifying child of the sea. 

For the time being, Tobio is staying at Hajime’s house. Endless weeks in the sun are spent together. They roll down the hills behind the village, and run themselves tired in games of tag with the other kids. And on special days, for dinner, they fill their bellies with the scrumptious seafood paella that Hajime’s mother prepares for them.

Tobio may just be a boy, but he eats like a beast. Under the table, Kunimi passes him his partially-uneaten portion and Tobio flashes him a big grin. It’s an ongoing joke between the two of them.

Once out of the Hajime household, there’s an entire world just waiting for them to explore. They amble down the hill with drunken steps and full bellies. Kunimi calls out to Tobio, who’s trailing behind him, half a footstep away, “C’mon, I want to take you somewhere before we have to go home.”

“Okay,” he obliges, and they trek down to the beachside, bare-footed and in tandem. The waves gently brush their ankles, as the seabreeze teases the very hair on their heads. He takes him to the old boat with the leaky hole, the one that he refurbished into a comfier bed of pillows when he learned it was no longer in use by the village fishermen.

Kunimi ushers Tobio into the space, and he sits across from him with some sort of confused look in his eyes, “What’s the point of sitting in a boat that‘s only going to sink when you set it on the water?”

He laughs, as if the answer is simple, “It doesn’t have to be a boat anymore. It can be anything you want it to be.” It’s a clumsy attempt at explaining the unexplainable, but Tobio nods as if he gets it. That’s what he loves most about him, he makes the unfeasible, impossibly possible.

Tobio crawls over a lumpy part of the pillow stack to settle in closer to Kunimi. They are lying horizontally along the vertical plank of wood, and their feet jut out over the edge of their boat. “So, what do _you_ want the boat to be right now, Tobio,” he asks in the stillness of the night, turning to face the boy who is the pure embodiment of both tumultuous sea and the mystic wind—yet, a mere breath’s width apart.

“Uh,” Tobio starts, his imagination rolling (Kunimi thinks it wise to take him cloud watching on the hammock more often if it takes him that long to conjure a response). “I’d want it to be a dragon. They’re cool and powerful.”

Maybe he _does_ have an imagination. Kunimi echoes, staring up at the endless sky, “Yeah, that’s cool.”

“If the boat is a dragon now,” Tobio says unsuspectingly inching closer to him, “You better hang on, or you’ll get thrown off!”

He suddenly jumps on top of Kunimi, pinning him down with his knees, and scrambling to keep his arms in place by holding them against pillows. He squeals, and jerks his body out of harm’s way when Tobio’s hands barely scratch his sides. Squirming beneath the weight of his companion, Kunimi manages a glare, “Not cool, Tobio.”

But it’s all in good fun, and he uselessly wrestles with the body that keeps him pinned. The boy’s elusive, like a receding tide, or an ephemeral breeze during a heatwave, and Kunimi has already exhausted his options of places where Tobio could be ticklish.

“That was fun,” Tobio breathes out, rolling off of Kunimi stomach when he was done messing with him. He’s still considerably close, with shoulders brushing firmly against one another. Kunimi hopes that he doesn’t notice when he drags his leg towards his chest in an effort to let it line up perfectly with Tobio’s.

“Fun for you, but now I’m tired,” he replies cooly, allowing the crown of his head to drift to Tobio’s shoulder. Wisps of his own chocolate brown hair blend nicely against his friend’s unkempt black hair, which escapes the fiercest comb.

Tobio blushes, “Are we allowed to sleep here?”

“It’s our boat. We can do whatever we want,” Kunimi tells him with a pout, and returns to his nestled position on Tobio’s shoulder. It doesn’t bother him that he’s all bone and edges, it’s a comfort to remind him that he’s _real_ and he’s not just an apparition of Hylia or some kind of thing fate strung together with her leftover string.

Admittedly, in a way fate must have been involved for them to have met. There are many things uncertain, like if their village is always going to be safe from Guardian raid, or if the world will ever learn to rebuild itself after a calamitous tragedy, but one thing’s for certain, Tobio will be as constant as the sky never fails to be blue.

However… Tobio lays stiffly, all bones, despite Kunimi’s very obvious advances to cuddle him. He didn’t think he’d have to teach him, but it seems as though he needs a little push: “Hey,” he sighs softly, giving Tobio’s cheek a pinch. “Put your arms like—” Kunimi maneuvers his wiry limbs right above his own pulsating heart.

“—this.”

Tobio hums, pressing his nose into the top of Kunimi’s head. The way that they are settled into position has them facing one another, and Kunimi has squeezed in the space between Tobio’s heart and his chin. He feels very warm, and doesn’t want to let go.

“Tell me now if you don’t like it,” whispers Kunimi, hoping that the delicate moment won’t shatter with his abrupt question. But Tobio does something very odd in response, and plants a chaste kiss on his head, the spot where his hairline parts two separate ways. 

Twelve years old and ever-endearing, Tobio whispers back, “If I didn’t like it, I would have stopped you by now.”

* * *

A harmless cuddle turns to another

and eventually, Tobio gets to kiss him—

 _Properly,_ that is.

* * *

By now, Tobio has already managed to become a permanent fixture in the quaint fishing village of Lurelin. He is old enough to go on sunrise boat rides with Hajime’s dad, and tags along anytime that Tooru proposes he help toss around some flour bags in the bakery. The two year difference between them and the kids they once considered big, now negligible.

In the time that passed, no new human shipwrecks graced their shores, and they continued to sustain a peaceful living on the beach town. Games of chase turn to meaningful work as they empty the porgy traps on a daily basis down by the waterside.

They’ve all grown up in their own little ways, most noticeably, Kindaichi, the eager neighbor kid who once had always bothered him for company. He eased himself into their circle of friends when he wasn’t a crybaby anymore. Marking his sixteenth birthday, he invited them to a get-together at his house.

The day of the party, the entire village contributed in a small way, providing new and exciting foods from across Hyrule that Tobio itched to try. That had to wait until all the decorations were set up and guests arrived.

“Tobio, I can’t reach the hook,” a muted voice called from behind a leafy palm tree. With an amused shake of his head, Tobio excused himself from the main area and pushed through the brush to find Kunimi barely exerting any effort to string the lanterns with his newfound teenaged height.

He began to say, “Kunimi, you can’t be serious—“

The boy cut him off by dragging him in by the cuff of his shirt and kissing him square on the lips. Dumbfounded by the sudden display of affection, he tried to regain his sense of balance while the corner of Kunimi’s lip quirked upwards at his disorientation.

“I said I can’t reach the hook. Help me out, will you,” 

“Fine, you big oaf,” he chuckles, tying an end of the string around a firm branch that’ll hold it in place. Kunimi can, indeed, reach the hook with ease and when he’s done, taps the inside of Tobio’s wrist to garner his undivided attention, “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Where’re you going again?” Tobio inquired, tugging on the finger with his entire hand. Kunimi shrugs, “My dad said he wanted to speak with me, I’ll be back before the party starts.”

“Sounds big,” he chimes in. Kunimi simply shrugs again and is off in the direction towards his house.

Tobio hears a rumble of boyish giggling from beyond their hiding spot. He sees a shock of reddish hair and immediately knows who he’s dealing with. Makki saunters over, with a sly gleam in his eye, “Well, you sure took your time back there.”

His face reddens at the implication of his words, “Shut up, Hanamaki. Go hang a lantern or something”

“Oh?” Another male voice peals from behind them: Matsukawa, or Mattsun, as lovingly described by Tooru. He takes a stand next to Makki, crossing his arms schemingly. Those two were impossible when bunched together, “We already know, you two can’t run from our omnipotent selves.”

Makki playfully grins at him, “Mama Kindaichi told us that they needed help moving the tables to the outdoor seating area.”

Each takes an elbow and ushers him back towards the main area, where Kindaichi’s siblings are stacking up various cutlery, combined across households. Large gatherings, like birthdays, called for the entire village to help the festivities along.

Evening quickly approaches, and they light the lanterns one by one. Tobio stays with Hajime, but keeps alert for any sign of Kunimi, who still has yet to return since the afternoon. The entire scene’s set, and it’s quite picturesque with the smoke rising from the fish roasting over the fire (or maybe, he’s just really freaking hungry right now).

Hajime nudges his shoulder, “He’ll be back soon. You know how things are between him and his dad.”

Tobio wrinkles his nose, “That’s exactly what I was worried about. This better not sound weird, but I hope that they’re not talking about _us.”_

His inner fears realized, Hajime understood which way to direct the conversation, “Oh, I see what you mean. What are you worried about, in particular?”

“It’s just hard to tip-toe around everyone nowadays,” Tobio mutters, gaze shooting down to his feet. Hajime is practically his brother, and can read in between the lines of the simple statement. Tobio and Kunimi’s childhood playmate relationship soon evolved into romantic notions as they got older. He, of all people would know, for it was he who heard both sides of the story when they got into a petty squabble.

He continues sheepishly, “You know, we’re not little kids anymore, and Kunimi and I can’t just play it off with the excuse that we’re just kids. Because we’re not.”

“Mmm.” Hajime considers this to himself. “First off, to me, you’ll always be my kid brother, no matter how old and big you are. Still, Tobio, you’re almost an adult, which means that you will have more autonomy in the more personal aspects of your life. If your relationship with Kunimi is something that you truly value, you’re obviously going to want to protect him.”

“But I do want to protect him,” Tobio croaks out, “If Kunimi’s dad says that we shouldn’t be together, then… we won’t be able to see each other anymore.”

It’s a glaringly fine line that they tread upon. Hajime scratches his chin. And even if it is not what Kunimi’s father wanted to talk to him about, it still obviously weighed heavily on the forefront of Tobio’s mind. He had to reassure him.

“If he can’t accept you two, then at least know that I do. Tooru has your back, and so do Makki and Mattsun, even if they love to tease you guys. We may not be blood-related, but you are my family.”

He wipes the salty tears from his sad eyes, “Thank you for believing in us, Hajime.”

* * *

_Being lost at sea gave Tobio a new definition of standing on solid ground. Whatever life throws in their path will be met with brute opposition because Tobio is not only an ocean, but also the jetty that softens the blow before it reaches the shore…_

* * *

Kindaichi cracks open the prize coconut with a hammer to find multitudes of caramel candies from Castletown spilling out. His friends, big and small, scramble on their knees to gather as much into their pockets as they can. Makki’s a force of nature, snatching anything his hands come in contact with (Mattsun reminds him to slow down for the little kids. He’s already competitive enough).

Unlike the others, Kunimi and Tobio are at the edge of the party, standing by the opulent buffet. When he’s not paying attention, an extra bite of meat is slipped onto his plate by the crafty hand of the boy standing next to him. Tobio looks at him fondly, as he pierces it with his fork. Kunimi lets a wily smile slip through, “Wanna get away?”

They retreat to a secluded dock. Stretching out his legs over the water, Tobio feels Kunimi’s chest ghost against his back as he wraps his arms from behind him. His entire body weight presses into Tobio, as he holds them both steady, like the tides in calm waters.

“Hey, this is for you.”

He slowly unhooks himself and catches what Tobio throws at him. His eyes gleam. It’s some of the caramel candies from earlier. He immediately pops one into his mouth and shares a piece with Tobio.

“Kunimi, if these planks of wood that we are sitting on weren’t a dock, what would you want it to be?”

Even with the ridiculous amount of time they have spent staring at the sky, daytime or nighttime, he still needs a moment to ponder. The boy with the chocolate brown hair and worrisome wrinkle in his brow. The one akin to fire, both impulsive and fleeting. The one like the earth itself, ever constant, filling his world with—

Love. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Kunimi/Kageyama is a ship that doesn’t get enough love. Just wait and see, I’m gonna fill up that lovely tag with more stories to enjoy.  
> \- The seafood paella is actually a sidequest in Lurelin Village if you play the game. Obviously, it’s not required to understand this series, but if by happenstance you pick up BotW, think of these amazing cuties when you’re exploring the land,  
> 


End file.
